Feels Like Home
by T. Costa
Summary: A near-death experience gives Rikku just the perspective she needs on life: a rose-colored one. Aurikku, oneshot.


**Feels Like Home**

_The banner you're waving__  
Is burning and red__  
You against the world  
__Diamonds and pearls  
__It never mattered  
Anyway…_

_If we don't make it alive –  
Well, it's a hell of a good day to die!  
All our light that shines strong  
Only lasts for so long  
And it's ashes to ashes again –  
Should we even try to pretend?  
All our light that shines strong__  
Only lasts for so long_

_All our light that shines strong  
Only lasts for so long_

-- The Offspring, _Half-Truism_

The sun was shining.

There had been rather a great deal of days like that since Sin was forever banished from Spira. Sunny, light-hearted, carefree days: perfect, with just the right amount of wind blowing through her dreadlocks.

Because if Rikku is honest with herself, and she usually is to a fault, her latest hairstyle is not braids, and it is not pretty, and not at all what a beautiful day like today deserves, but it keeps it out of her face and out of the way should she be attacked.

Not that she's worried about being attacked. Not when she's two miles out from Bikanel Island on a "borrowed" skimmer, laughing while it bounces on the waves, almost but not quite throwing her off and giving her a little jolt of adrenaline _every damn time_.

Rikku was never much of an adrenaline junkie; she saved that for Brother, or Paine, or Tidus. And _Him_.

Whenever Yunie joked about Rikku enjoying the rush, Rikku just smiled. Because she wasn't brave or special, and every time she'd dived down to salvage some new machina, or fought a new fiend, and every time they had to fight Seymour, and even when it came time to battle Vegnagun, she was terrified. That horrible, heart-stopping-but-really-pounding-in-your-chest, dry-throated, "_Mama-can-I-go-home-now?_" terrified. And if no one else suspected it, Rikku knew. Because Rikku is honest with herself, at least, as far as Rikku goes.

And maybe, just maybe, He'd suspected. But He was gone now, sent off to the Farplane with Mama and Seymour and Uncle Braska. Deep down in the back of her mind, Rikku knows that He wouldn't have blamed her for being afraid, and He wouldn't have made fun of her for being childish. She remembered Him saying one night, to Yunie when they were on the pilgrimage, that courage isn't the absence of fear but the knowledge of how to conquer it, to conquer one's emotions and do your job anyway, in spite of that overwhelming terror.

When Rikku heard Him say those words she set about steeling herself from within. No one ever knew when she was afraid, unless she was on the Thunder Plains because even more than monsters and sin and Him, she was terrified of the thunder and lightning.

So Rikku gunned the engines and turned around, whooping and not caring that she was going forty-fifty miles per hour over Very Deep Water, because it was all in the name of making herself stronger. And a teensy bit of her loved it, too: loved the wind, loved the salty spray, loved the feeling of being absolutely free. She was no Al Bhed princess, she was no warrior for good; out here, she was just Rikku, interminable thief, riding around on a stolen skimmer and laughing to nobody.

Sun and wind, turning her skin bronze and her face red. For a brief moment she was _happy_.

And then she felt the skimmer slipping out from under her as a particularly large wave bounced her around in the ocean. She grappled with the handles, fingertips sliding across the rubber-coated handle ridges futilely as she struggled to remain on the craft. The thought that perhaps she should have told someone she was going to steal that skimmer; that perhaps her father would worry about her; that perhaps Yuna would spend the next month combing these waters so she could send Rikku so she wouldn't return as a fiend; these thoughts all flew through her mind and before she even had a chance to utter a surprised exclamation. Her head collided with the exhaust pipe, water no longer pouring through it because the craft had stopped, and all was black.

* * *

_It was warm._

Rikku's first thought was that she is unbelievably comfortable and that Yuna must have found her before she'd died, because surely only the summoner's best pillows and mattresses could feel this good on her likely bruised and battered body.

"Mmmm," she whispered, her throat dry. She felt stiff and awkward, as if she'd been lying in bed for weeks and weeks and weeks. Slowly, without opening her eyes, she stretched, sinuous muscles toned from years of running from people who she'd stolen from, and from fighting the monsters of Home, lengthening slowly. She didn't feel a pull and inhaled sharply.

Her eyes shot open. Slowly, she let them drift to her right, then her left, before she looked directly in front of her. There, her gaze met that of one hidden by darkened lenses. She'd never been able to tell what He was thinking, because of those Yevon-damned glasses.

He was sitting. Oddly enough, so was she. She could swear that moments ago she was laying back, comfortable, perhaps in a bed of the softest down-feathers, but now they were both sitting upright. Small stools sat on a translucent ground, one that Rikku couldn't see all the way; it kept shifting, as if it wasn't sure what it wanted to be. They were in a forest -

No, now it was a beach. It was beautiful, as far as the eye could see -

Now it was a park, with lots of trees and grass to roll around in, and smells of life and joy -

The scenery kept subtly shifting around them, never staying still long enough for her to really pin down what she liked about the place before it was suddenly _somewhere else_. At the very edge of her mind she knew there was nothing there; it all faded into a sort of white-black-_not-real_-color that melded in her corneas and made her wish she had better peripheral vision.

Then she finally turned her gaze back toward Him. She hadn't even realized that she'd stopped looking. By the time this thought flitted across her mind, like that beautiful breeze from the beach, the beach she'd kicked the skimmer from and gone out riding -

She realized that He was not alive and therefore something was Very Very Wrong.

"Where are we?" she whispered, terrified to break the silence but terrified not to at the same time.

"Between," He replied. His voice sounded the same, and she wondered how that was possible because _dead people don't have vocal cords_. He sounded less burdened than the last time she'd heard Him speak and she thought that perhaps Death agreed with some people.

"Between where?"

He didn't answer her right away; in fact, she wasn't sure how long it took for Him to speak because the world around them was shifting, changing, and making her realize that time didn't mean much here at all.

"Between," He repeated. "This is the veil between the worlds." He stopped and looked at her, and then gestured to His right. "On one hand, life," then He switched and pointed to His left, "and on the other, eternity."

_Oh, sweet machina_, Rikku thought frantically to herself. _What if Yunie didn't send Him right and He's stuck here? Is that possible? Why is He __**here**__?_

He chuckled softly and she felt her heart – _do the dead have hearts?_ – speed up at the sound. It was that same old chuckle, that same old sarcastic, low, irrepressible laugh that sent goosebumps down her spine.

"I am here, Rikku, because you shouldn't be," and He took her hand in His, gently, ever so slowly. She was amazed to find that she could feel it, as if He'd never passed on to the Farplane, as if none of this had ever happened and they were frozen in time, sometime Back Then. He chuckled again and murmured, softly, so quiet that she could barely hear it – _"So reckless."_

Rikku felt the indignation rising up in her and somehow managed to stuff it back down. Somewhere in her past she had been taught to respect the dead, and she wasn't sure if that thought still counted if she were dead as well.

"You aren't dead, Rikku," Auron said. She looked up and noticed the lines in his face, the ones she'd spent so many hours memorizing Back Then, had begun to fade. No, Auron would never look young, but he certainly looked unburdened.

"Not yet, anyhow," he continued. He did not release her hand, instead looking incredibly sad. She bit her lip and slowly drew the appendage back to herself, worried that somehow, some way, he could sense the racing of her heart.

"Not yet?" she asked.

"Not yet," he confirmed. They didn't speak for a good long while.

She watched the shifting landscape, taking in the sounds of sea birds and screaming children. Exactly the kind of thing she'd never associated with him -

And it was then that she realized that she was sitting next to him and therefore he was not a Him any longer, but simply a him, and he was a lot less intimidating that way. She inhaled and looked back toward him; his expression had not changed in the millennia that had passed.

"Why not?"

He smiled. "Because, Rikku, we all have a time to come to the Farplane, and today is not your day," and if his voice sounded a little sad, Rikku said nothing.

Instead, she asked another question. "Why are you here?"

Her voice sounded scared and she tried to harden her diaphragm to lend her voice support but none came. Auron smiled, an almost gentle look coming over his harsh – but pleasant, to her – features.

"I am here because...."

And then he stopped, as if he couldn't think of a good reason, or maybe he wasn't briefed on the _right_ reason.

"Because...?" she tried to draw out of him, but he refused to answer. Instead, he stood and offered her his hand. Her heart started to thump,_ thumpity thump thump_, in her chest and she wondered if it was going to do the job for her and jump right out.

They walked toward a tree that suddenly wasn't there anymore, and she can hear laughter, joyous laughter. She turned and there is Yuna, playing with her newborn son, on the beach in Besaid, laying down on her back in the warm sand, holding the baby up as he kicks his feet and gurgles down at his mother.

"Yuna!" a voice called out, excited. Rikku turned in time to catch a flash of Tidus, running toward his wife, before the scene changes to one of an empty Blitzball stadium. There is nobody there but the sea breeze is almost definitely blowing through, as she can see from the few pieces of litter scattering about.

It stayed that way for a long while. Finally Rikku turned to Auron.

"Why?" she repeated. He didn't answer right away, instead taking the time to look at her. Rikku knew she hadn't grown up like she should have; she's in her twenties now and she still looked like an irrepressible teenage Al Bhed thief. Suddenly she thinks that he might not like her Thief dressphere because she's so exposed, and wonders if she ought to have put something else on before she stole that skimmer.

Instead of answering her question, he said, "What does your father think of you dressing like that?" in a slightly amused tone of voice.

"He doesn't care," Rikku responded automatically. Then she blushed and turned away. "Hey, it's hot at Home! The Al Bhed all dress pretty..."

Her voice fades away and she wonders to herself what he thinks of the outfit.

"So they do," he replied. He doesn't answer the question, instead watching as the scene shifted to one of a desert. It's Home, Bikanel Island, and she can see Al Bhed swarming over the place, rebuilding even now.

"I come here a lot," he said, offhand. "It's a great pastime of the dead, you know – watching the living."

Her heart skipped a beat and she bit down on her lip, wondering whether he meant, he comes here, to the Veil, often, or rather, if he watches Home a lot.

"Why do the dead bother with the living?" she asked, carefully avoiding the question.

"To remind us of why we exist, I suppose," he replied. Rikku can just make out the sun setting and wonders how long she's been gone, whether or not her father has already searched for her.

"Why _do_ we exist?" Rikku asked. "It seems like an awful lot of bother...an awful lot of suffering..."

Her question trailed off, and Auron raised his eyebrow, as if perhaps asking her what kind of suffering she'd endured.

"You know. People you love dying before you," she finished, lamely.

He smirked and the scene changed again. It's Besaid again, only this time it's Wakka and Lulu, playing with their children – plural, now, because Lulu went and got herself pregnant again and so they have a whole damn family. Rikku wistfully looked at the scene. She knew that Lulu and Wakka loved each other, very much, and she'd give anything to feel that way. If only for a second. To know that someone loved her.

"That's why," Auron said. He pointed at the scene, with the family, who was building a sand castle and laughing with each other.

"To have kids?" Rikku asked, the confusion evident in her voice.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "For moments like that. Our lives are a series of moments. Treasure the good ones, ignore the bad ones. That's why we exist. For the _moments_." His voice, oddly, was very intense, as if he was imparting some great knowledge to her. Knowing him, he probably was.

Rikku smiled and looked over the scene. Lulu was truly happy and she felt a great warmth for her friend, and a tiny niggling bit of jealousness. "Well, that's a moment _I'll_ never have," she said, biting her lip.

"Why not?" he asked. Rikku sidestepped the question, because they're getting into dangerous territory now.

"Just..you know. I dunno. Guys don't like a girl who might pick their pockets at the first chance, and who can kick butt better than they do," she said, halfheartedly, with a lame sort of giggle at the end.

"Men do not like women who don't think highly of themselves," he corrected her. Her heart sped up because he called her a woman and not a girl. "A man can always tell if a woman doesn't think she is worthy of affection. You don't do yourself justice."

She smiled. "Thanks," and if her tone was a little sarcastic, he didn't say anything.

The scene changed and they were watching a beautiful sunset from the Calm Lands. The sun was sliding past Mt. Gagazet.

They remained quiet for a while, watching the sun dip lower in the sky. Then she spoke.

"I wish I could have those moments," she said, seriously. "But it's not...not going to happen, because I...I can't," and her voice took on a slightly desperate tone. "I can't love anybody...else."

She very carefully kept her eyes off of his face, instead watching the sky, which was darkening faster and faster. She knew he was watching her.

"I see," he said. He almost sounded disappointed.

"So you said I'm not dead yet?" she asked. "When do I die? When do I know?"

"If you die, you'll know," he replied. "You're here because you have to make a choice."

"A choice?"

"Between life and death," he responds. His voice is very serious. "Between this...and the Farplane." He gestured at the scene in front of them.

"How do I know how to choose?"

He smiled, just a little bit. "That's up to you."

"And if I choose death?" It must have been something in the tone of her voice, something that let him know exactly how serious she was, because he turned to her and regarded her for a few minutes before answering.

"Then you die," he said, simply.

She turned back out to the scene. The sun had set now, and she knew that if she were actually standing in the Calm Lands a deathly cold would have settled upon her now, leaking over from the cold peaks of Mt. Gagazet. As it was, she still felt warm and comfortable.

"What if I choose to die?" she asked. "What will happen?"

"You will pass on to the Farplane," he said, as if it were the simplest thing on the planet.

"Will....everyone be there?"

"Most," he said. "Not all."

She gulped, and said the hardest words in her life. "And you? Would you be there?"

"I would be there, too."

She turned away from him and felt his hand close on her shoulder.

"Rikku...do not follow me into death. It was my time," and his voice was sad, so very sad. "Yours will come soon enough."

"When?" she asked.

"I don't know. No one is immortal. You will come here eventually."

"But what if I want to?" she asked. "What if I want to come here and be with...everyone?" She was straying away from dangerous territory all over again, and she knew it.

"Then you would have made the choice already," Auron replied.

She closed her eyes in pain. "I want to stay," she said.

His grip tightened and she found herself facing him. He had spun her around and she thought that for the first time in the time she'd known him, he might be a little bit angry with her.

"Don't, Rikku," he said. "Don't stay."

"Why?" she asked, with a sinking heart.

He gives her a patented Auron glare and turns away, starting to walk toward where she knew the Travel Agency was in the real world.

"Auron!" she called out. It was the first time she'd said his name since arriving in this strange place, and she hoped it would at least make him think.

It did. He stopped and turned to her.

"You can't stay," he said. His voice sounded anguished. "Because if you died because of me I wouldn't..."

"Wouldn't what?" she asked.

"I wouldn't be able to rest in peace," he said. He was never good at this sort of thing, and she knew it. That was part of what had made her love him in the first place.

"But I..." Rikku didn't know how to explain it to him, that she would be so much happier here, with him, than back there, even though everyone else was too. They'd come eventually. She wanted to be near him, always.

"I will be here, waiting, when your time comes," he said. "But please don't ask me to bear that burden. There's still a lot for you to do, Rikku. You're so young..."

They are standing directly in front of each other now, and Rikku felt her face heat and her heart speed up, _again_. Almost tenderly, for him, he reached out and pushed a lock of her hair away from her face.

"Waiting?" she whispered. Her gaze had dropped to his chest, carefully away from his face, lest her hopes be crushed.

"Waiting," he replied, gently lifting her chin to look at him. "I have been waiting. A little bit longer won't hurt me."

The tears begin, without her permission, to leak down her face. "But I...what if...I want to stay here? With you?"

Sighing, he let go of her chin and reached up, carefully removing his sunglasses. He massaged the bridge of his nose for a moment – his hair was still sort of gray in spots, she noticed, and wondered if people stopped aging when they came to the Farplane or if there was something else afoot here. Even his eye was still sorta screwed up, but her breath caught when she realized how handsome she found him, despite all of that.

"Rikku," he said, and there was a bit of a hitch in his voice. "I...you can't. I can't. Not right now."

She looked away, the tears coming again. "I want to."

He stepped closer; they were almost touching, and she restrained the urge to throw her arms around him and beg him to let her stay here, with him, for all eternity.

"Rikku," he said, gently. She looked up at him again. He was looking at her, really looking, with a sort of intense gaze he'd never graced upon her before.

His hand, the one not holding his glasses, came up to cup her cheek. She leaned into it as he used his thumb to wipe some of her tears away. Her eyes squeezed shut of their own accord.

"I don't want this to end," she admitted, her eyes still closed.

"I know," he replied. She felt him leaning downward and then their lips were touching, just briefly, a hint of a kiss. "Just...go back. I promise, I'll be here when you return."

She opened her eyes, her strange, Al Bhed eyes, and looked into his. He smiled, a sad sort of smile, and leaned in again, giving her a real, if chaste, kiss.

"I love you," she whispered, leaning her head to his chest. "I don't want to go back to that...without you."

"If I could follow I would," he said. She felt his arm encircle her. "But I can't."

She willed him to say it, to admit it to her after all these years, but kept her mouth firmly clamped shut.

They stood there, in the ethereal Calm Lands, until sunrise. Rikku found herself surprised that the scenery did not change, but didn't say anything. The passage of time meant nothing here, she knew.

"It's time," he said, breaking their embrace. "You must choose, Rikku."

She sighed, shuddering. "I don't want to go back..." she began, looking up at him. "But if you want me to, Auron, I will. And I'll try to live for those moments...but I'll always be missing you. At the back of my mind."

He smiled and cupped her cheek again. "I know," he said. "But I'll be here at the end. I promise."

She leaned into him, and he gave her one last kiss, their lips touching ever-so-slightly and sweetly, before he slowly pushed the sunglasses he held in his hand into hers. She stared at him; Auron, g_iving up his sunglasses_? Unheard of.

"It's a loan," he said, that oh-so-familiar smirk coming back over his face. "I expect them back when you return."

She smiled, and, giving his hand one last squeeze, she turned to the right and began walking.

* * *

When Rikku came to she was floating.

Her hands were resting on her chest, and her hair, her oh-so-sloppy dreadlocks, were coming unraveled. She wondered how long in real time she'd been here, and snorted.

To her left was open water; her right, the skimmer. Coughing, she righted herself and began paddling toward it, thinking that she had some interesting hallucinations when almost dead, when she noticed that she had something clutched in her hand.

A simple pair of sunglasses.

Common sense asserted itself and she clambered aboard the skimmer before she began crying, salty-sweet tears dripping down her cheeks and onto her soaking-wet outfit, which she swore aloud that she'd change when she got Home because she didn't think he liked it.

"I'll try," she whispered, her eyes clenched shut as if she could reach him somehow. "I'll try, Auron. And I'll see you in the end."

Then, with a change of mood that astounded even her, she shoved the glasses on her face and turned the skimmer on, whooping with real joy as she turned back toward Home.

Because, if Rikku is honest with herself, life has suddenly taken on a rose-colored hue that has nothing to do with the glasses perched on her nose. She knows that when she goes to the Farplane, there will be no skimming on the ocean in stolen watercraft, and there will be no skydiving, and there will be no clinging to the Celsius as it glides through the skies. She promises herself that she will do all of it at least once before she dies.

And if Tidus gets a strange look on his face when he sees those distinctive glasses, or if Yuna becomes contemplative when Rikku joyously plays with her second cousin, Rikku ignores it.

"Life, Yuna, is all about the _moments,_" she says, smiling as she bounces the baby on her knee. "You remember the good, and ignore the bad." The glasses still have not come off, because they give her courage and she knows she has to keep her promise – she has to give them back to him when she goes to the Farplane. "We'd better collect as many good ones as we can before we die!"

And when she is present for Lulu's third baby's arrival, she smiles and looks up, wondering if he's watching now.

She knows he is, and she smiles a little knowingly. But she doesn't let the knowledge stop her from yelling with happiness when Lulu's new son is named Auron, or from jumping on Kimahri's back and demanding a ride and giggling when he refuses to move, or from stealing skimmers and going on long, fun, joyous rides across the Bikanel Bay. She is determined, she decides, to live as much as she can for him, because he can't do these things anymore so at least he can watch.

And if sometimes, when she's almost asleep, she can feel a presence there, watching her, she never says anything. Because that would be cheating. He'll be waiting for her in the end, she knows.

And because Rikku is almost always honest with herself, she knows now that she has become an adrenaline junkie, because she doesn't fear death anymore. She knows that the day that she dies will be the happiest day of her life; because she knows that he will be waiting there for her with open arms.

_Author's Notes: Ah hah! My first Aurikku! And the idea wasn't all mine, oh no – Sylla from the Genesis Awards Forums gave me the idea when I was despairing of how to write one, since he's dead! So thanks, Sylla! Also, much thanks to La Editor, who let me steal a line from some of her stories. Seriously, go read her stuff. It's A M A Z I N G. At least 20x better than anything I could ever write._

_Edit Sept. 29, 2009: I went through and fixed the majority of the errors in this. There's still some tense issues, but I left them there for effect. Thanks to everyone who told me they loved this – it gave me the gumption to fix it up!_


End file.
